


Ambush

by carotid



Category: Discworld - Terry Pratchett
Genre: F/F, Gen, Maladict/Polly Perks (implied)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-19
Updated: 2018-12-19
Packaged: 2019-09-22 12:59:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,694
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17060234
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/carotid/pseuds/carotid
Summary: Polly is unsure about surprises, even when -- or perhaps especially when -- they're intended for her benefit.





	Ambush

**Author's Note:**

  * For [FaintlyMacabre](https://archiveofourown.org/users/FaintlyMacabre/gifts).



> Many apologies that you got a first-time Yuletide participant who screwed up posting and defaulted despite having the story done days before the deadline (and then immediately posted it TWICE for good measure)! Please consider this flair of bureaucratic/technical incompetence and ensuing panic on my part to be a special Borogravian military finishing touch.

The Duchess was having a slow night, which was fairly common in the summer for an inn (to say nothing of for the dead). The relatively genial weather eliminated the dire need for shelter or huddling about a giant fireplace (and in fact often resulted a stuffiness inside that one longed to escape), and the long working days created a desire to go to bed before waking up again soon enough at the eager sunrise rather than gabbing about in a public house. Oh for sure there were the fixtures whose arms weren't complete without a tankard at the end of them and tongues were never lacking for a tale of questionable accuracy, but they just kind of hung about like the low buzz of insects in the air, sometimes annoying but mostly ignorable and with a great deal of talk about sex (but, thankfully, none of the actual mating). 

That didn't mean that there was any lack of work for Polly, of course. The heat meant that everything was smellier, from the privies to the people that used them, food was more prone to spoiling, and the actual buzzing insects in the air invaded all spaces with a fervour that could only be called Borogravian. Not to mention that the sparser clientele just meant that that time could be put toward preparing, again, for the winter that would be coming, ready to soak wood and tear at paint and poke through cracks. Still, when the day was winding down and it was finally too dark to be doing repairs, Polly often found herself with a bit of flexibility with her time, able to do end-of-day clean-up at a more leisurely pace, in the order determined by her fancy, not by the needs and obstructions of the guests, and more or less, for better or for worse, in the quiet of her own thoughts.

She had bent down to stow some jugs under the bar, and when she stood back up again, there was a vampire six inches away from her face.

"Hello, Mal," said Polly.

Polly was quite fond of Eva Clambers, who was both kind and sensible, and she knew that the woman had been completely well-meaning when she'd assured Maladicta that she was "welcome here anytime," but the widow herself had had, presumably, immediate second thoughts, as indicated by her immediate backwards steps away from the slow and pleased and very vampiric smile that had spread across Mal's face and, more to the point, been pointedly revealing in the way that vampiric smiles are.

It turned out that the whole "needs an invitation inside" rule was both loose to the point of being about as effective as those laws against people being inventive about where they put their private bits (or what they'll put in them) and yet also the one measure available for putting the smallest damper on a vampire waltzing into anyone's place as though they owned it.

"Good evening, barkeep," Mal drawled. "I haven't missed last call, have I?"

"Ha ha," said Polly. "What brings you around?" The vampire wasn't wearing her uniform, so she assumed that she hadn't missed any word about a new invasion or threat of invasion or implication of the possibility of invasion.

She shrugged. "Just passing through."

After the first year of disappearing off the face of the disc before meeting up to deal with the first post-truce conflict, Mal did a notable amount of passing through. There'd never be any talk about where she'd been or, if they weren't heading off to attend to some military necessity or another, where she was going. But they'd catch up, she'd stay a night, or maybe even a few, and then she'd be heading down the road again.

"Mal!" came a cry from the doorway. They both turned their heads to see Shufti standing in the doorway, Jack hefted up on one hip and a beaming smile on her face.

"Private Manickle and Quartermaster Jack," Mal grinned, stepping away from the bar and over to a table. "Please, come, take a load off," she added, as though she weren't the one person in the room who didn't actually live here.

"You don't have to go," Polly said to the motion in the corner of her eye that was Gummy Abens pushing himself to his feet.

"Oh, don'tcha worry that you're kicking me out," the old man said with a dismissive wave of his hand and faint mist of spittle as he dropped a couple coins on the bar. "I tell ya, Polly, if you gots a group of yer lads together, that's when you gets to share your shtories for a change, not tell 'em. Ol' Gummy Abens is shtill shergeant enough to know when not to lishen."

Polly watched the old man go, then scooped up the money, finished wiping down the bar, and joined the others over at the table, where Shufti had her face buried in her hands as she laughed.

"Join us, Ozzer," said Mal. "We were just discussing the day during the march through the mountains when it rained and Blouse kept heading off in the wrong direction because his glasses were all fogged."

"What do you supposed would've happened if he'd ever lost those things?" Polly mused. "He was pretty blind without them."

"Blind leading the blind, doesn't sound like that big of a change to me," Mal said with a shrug.

"He couldn't have been much worse with a weapon without them than he was with them," said Shufti. "I saw him trying to handle a sword once. He was worse than me."

"I still don't have much use for swords," Mal sighed.

"One was plenty useful to you when we were on our way to PrinceMarmadukePiotreAlbertHansJosephBernhardtWillhelmsberg last year and ran into that apprentice assassin," Polly pointed out.

"You were useful to me," Mal protested. "And... you happened to have a sword."

"You're going to give Jack some tips, right, Polly?" Shufti was holding both of the toddlers hands like the strings of a marionette, partly suspended from above and partly standing on his own squishy-kneed legs. "Not that I want him to have to use them, but even if you don't want to use them, I think it's still better to know. Besides, I'd trust you to not make it too exciting."

"Wow, thanks."

"I mean it, though," Shufti said, looking up with uncomfortable earnestness. "I'd be afraid that some of these men... they'd make it all exciting, like something you want to try for real. You've held Jack and been to war, and I don't know how you can hold a baby in your arms and make him excited to go to war when you know what it actually is. It's hard enough to hold them and then just have to let go. I mean, Jackrum might have called us his little lads and said that he'd take care of us, and well, he did, but not until after we were already out into the fire. And maybe... maybe Jack won't have to go into the fire at all."

"Can you picture Jackrum holding a baby," Mal asked in the not-asking way of a person who is sure that everyone already knows the answer, and that it's the same hilariously obvious answer for everyone. 

Shufti giggled. "Upon my oath, I am not a nannying man! Chug that milk and get crawling, lad!"

"Are you all right, Ozzer?" Mal asked with a curious head tilt and that dangerously keen gaze of hers.

"Fine," said Polly after making a loud sneezing sound into her sleeve then wiping her face with a loud snort that would have made any sixteen year-old boy proud.

Fortunately, Shufti interrupted. "I feel like I need to pinch myself right now."

"Hmm?" Mal turned away again, one eyebrow arched quizzically.

Shufti shrugged. "This right now, us... It's just not what I'd expected I'd be getting to have back when I first..." One of her hands came to rest on her stomach as she trailed off. "I mean, it's a bit of a girls' night, wouldn't you say?"

"Or a soldiers' night," Mal pointed out.

"I reckon that it's both," said Polly.

"And what could be more unexpected than that," Mal concluded.

"I just thought that, um, married life would be different. And outside of that, there really wasn't a life left." Shufti shrugged, matter-of-fact despite Polly knowing that she was speaking literally, in a way that made Polly flinch inside now. "And things ended up changing even more than that would've been, but still- I mean, obviously, I didn't know you two, but just sitting around after hours, chattering away... it's surprisingly the same, in a certain way."

"Well, the world can only stay upside-down for so long, I suppose," said Mal.

A young mother and a toddler could only stay up for so long as well, and it wasn't too many stories after that when Shufti and Jack both started yawning. Polly thought that she was doing a pretty good job at not showing how heavy her eyelids felt, but Mal stood up and declared that she was going to hang in the shed and Polly could say without question that Mal didn't look the least bit tired. 

In a matter of minutes, the public room was empty. Polly blew out the lamps and headed to bed.

The next morning, Mal presented Polly with a proposal.

"...what?" Polly asked, blinking in confusion, privy-cleaning bucket still in hand.

"A vacation. It's like when you go off to fight in the war but without the war part."

"So just going to off to fight?"

"Well, if that's your fancy, I'm sure there's someone who will take your money for it. But no, most devoted and dutiful of innkeepers, what I am talking about is... going on leave."

"How can I go on leave if I'm not currently active?"

"I mean going on leave from life."

"Generally that's called 'dying.'"

"Now you're just being purposefully obtuse with me."

Polly sighed and set down the heavy water bucket she'd been carrying to the privy. "You know, not all of us can just pick and and leave whenever we want to. I have responsibilities and people depending on me here. I can't just say, oh, yeah, pa, I'm heading off on vacation. Why? Oh, not because I'm off to take care or something, no, I just feel like it."

"Not all of us have somewhere we can just stay and feel needed, either," snapped Mal, whose mouth then snapped shut. Polly wondered if she was wearing an expression of shock similar to the one that had flashed across the vampire's face.

"Look," Mal started again, "I have it all taken care of. Karen!"

A pale, skinny young girl with jet black hair wearing an impressively dumpy, impressively bright pink sackcloth that someone had the delusion of being a dress somehow materialized next to Mal.

"Polly, this is Karen," said Mal, as the other undoubtedly-a-vampire waved. "She'll be filling in for you."

"Mal!" Polly grabbed her friend by the elbow and started dragging her away. "I don't draw a salary! We do not have the money to pay for an extra employee!"

"Oh, she's not an employee."

"I am happy for zee experience!" Karen chirped.

"Just go wait over there for now!" Mal called back to her, then turned to Polly. "She's a Black Ribboner, of course, I would never- and she... likes numbers. She likes numbers a lot." Something oddly and disconcertingly like pleading crossed Mal's face. "And she really wants to... find something more suitable for herself. She won't be doing your books any harm, I can swear that. And she can pick up the other stuff."

"And I can pick stuff up, too," said Shufti, walking past them to the privy bucket.

"Shufti, you've-"

"-got to get back to doing more work sometime," she said firmly. "It's not like I'll be going away from Jack. Besides, I... think I like the idea of him watching me do things. And it turns out that children do a lot to firm up the back."

I think that anyone you really love will end up doing that, Polly thought as she watched Shufti toss the water then head back toward the inn, where Paul was standing in the door holding Jack. Her brother smiled at Shufti, then looked past her to Polly and waved.

Polly waved back.

"How long were you thinking?" she asked Mal, still looking at her brother.

"It's about two weeks to Ankh-Morpork. Otto had some recommendations about where to stay, if you'd like to do that. We don't have to, though, I know that's a really long time, we could always just take a trip through the Sto Plains, see some... cabbages, I think they have cabbages there."

"We have cabbages here," said Polly.

"But they're _our_ cabbages. These would be... _not our cabbages_."

"And that's what would make it special?"

"Yes! Well, no, not the cabbages specifically. But... what makes some things special is that they're yours. And what makes other things special is that they're not yours."

"And what about things that are both?"

"Er... double... special...?"

Polly didn't think that she'd ever heard Mal's voice pitch itself that high. She looked down at her hands, which were empty, and then at the ground, which had nothing to pick up. She looked back up at Mal, who was somehow making leaning against the wall of a privy look elegant, although part of that look also involved glancing off Down The Road. 

"This wasn't very considerate of you, you know."

That made Mal actually look at Polly, head turning so quickly you could almost hear the fwip of the air over her cheekbones, eyes wide as saucers. "Er... what?"

"Not very considerate," Polly repeated, hands on her hips. "I mean, do I even get a say in this?"

"Well... yes? I'm asking you?"

"Asking me after you've already brought in some vampire kid to take over the books? And Shufti's in on this, which means Paul is, which means that my dad must be. So if I say no, I'm not just saying no to you, I'm saying no to all of them, too. I'm outnumbered here."

"I just... I knew you'd have concerns, so I knew I'd need a plan to take care of them."

"I'm not a rupert, Mal. I don't need my plans anticipated for me. You could've asked and then planned. We're on the same side here." She dropped her arms with a sigh. "Look... give me a few days to think about it, all right? I can wrap my brain around the idea and we can hammer out any other plans based on what I might think. Can you stick around long enough for that?"

"Yes! Definitely. One hundred percent."

"Good." She started walking back toward the inn, and Mal fell in step beside her. "I think I'd want to spend some time giving Karen some actual training. Numbers are all well and good, but you can't run an inn just on numbers."

"You would know."

"I would," Polly agreed. "So... let's just agree that I'm the one who does the- who makes suggestions to the owner of the Duchess about hiring?"

"Agreed. Really, it was only meant to be a suggestion to the suggestor, Karen knows she's essentially in the interview stage."

"I am a self-starter vit positive energy!" came a call from back behind the privy.

Mal heaved a long-suffering sigh. "Don't let the humans know you can hear them from that far away."

"Sorry! I vill endeavour to be less intimidating!" Karen squeaked.

"Intimidating's just fine sometimes, actually," Polly said to the vampire behind the privy, then turned back to the one next to her. "Leave the instructions to me, all right?"

"All yours."

"And just going forward... no more surprise attacks?"

There was a glint in Mal's eyes as she glanced at her sideways with a sly grin. "Well... I can't guarantee _that_."

Polly could feel her cheeks glowing red like the new day dawning.


End file.
